[Coco] CoCo emulation on a Compaq Internet Appliance?

[Joe]

I'm fairly certain it will boot dos, however It will never be able to use a 
USB floppy to read/write coco disks.
The problem is that the real FDC chip , as found on most motherboards can be 
reprogrammed to handle different formats. At least within the original IBM 
spec.
USB drives sort of "emulate" this chip, just enough to get PC disks working. 
There are no real registers to muck about with.
The main reason FDRAWCMD can't work with USB drives. I really hope I'm wrong 
on this but I doubt it.
On the other hand, Most chipsets have floppy functionality built in. There 
"might" be a way to get real drives hooked up to it with the vestigial 
internal controller.
As I haven't even held it in my hands yet, I'm just speculating at the 
momment. Has anyone ever gotten a USB floppy to read/write non-standard 
formats?
If so what make/model? Drivers? etc.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Taylor" <operator at coco3.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo emulation on a Compaq Internet Appliance?


> At 02:50 AM 10/22/2007, you wrote:
>>Just bought the one on Ebay. didn't get as nice a deal as you did but hey. 
>>From what I've been reading its not CE but I could be wrong, when I get it 
>>I'll figure it out. There IS an older verison of VCC called POCO that was 
>>Windows CE but I haven't worked on it in a while. If it is CE guess whats 
>>getting pulled out or "retirement". Anyway when toys and time arrive I'll 
>>post something.
>>Frankly though with only 266Mhz to play with I'm thinking Keil's emulator 
>>would probably do a better job than VCC assuming it can boot dos. On the 
>>other hand an AMD 266 would be a socket 7 CPU with a 4X multiplyer. Might 
>>be upgradable If not to the full 100Mhz FSB at least an 83 Mhz overclock. 
>>Or perhaps a higher Multiplyer if the board really won't go higher that 
>>66. Never seen one yet though. Again I'll need to muck around and let you 
>>know.
>
>
>
> Great.  It really looks like the best candidate for an emulator machine. 
> If everything can be put on a CompactFlash card that the system can boot 
> from, with enough work I see no reason why this can't be turned into a 
> fake CoCo, TRS-80 Model 1, etc.  That is, a separate CF card could also be 
> used for each vintage computer emulated, making it so darn easy to run 
> that it almost seems too good to be true.
>
> I've never tried to boot into MS-DOS/DOS from any of my laptops that have 
> a CF port or memory stick slot.  I guess all we need is for the CF card to 
> work on the Compaq appliance and then stuff it with all the CoCo "stuff" 
> possible that the emulator can read.
>
> I would absolutely crap a gold brick if I can get this thing to read a USB 
> floppy drive (from Keil's or JV's emulator) since I have at least half of 
> my CoCo stuff on 3.5's written from a real CoCo.  With the BIOS reporting 
> it can boot from Floppy A: or Hard Drive C:, and knowing that there is NO 
> floppy drive on the unit, it kinda sounds obvious that it supports USB 
> floppy drives BEFORE Windows takes over.
>
>
>
>
>
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